The Last Menagerie: Passenger Pigeon is part of a line of commemorative plates created by Nicole to mark the extinction of animals throughout history. For the “Looking Local” exhibition at Antenna's Room 220 in New Orleans, the object has been paired with a text by LJ Moore titled The Past Future Perfect. Originally written for Antebi’s The Last Menagerie project, the text also appears in Moore’s book “Small, Fierce Things.”

When combined, the two works become a meditation on consciousness, mortality, and (to quote Nicole): “that which is lost, but not forgotten.” Underlying both works is an imaginative, but extremely pertinent call-to-action: The world we live in is not ours alone. Perhaps it’s time that we listen to those with whom we share it with, for a way to preserve it.

“The bat had spent a lot of time watching TV: mostly classic horror flicks and the National Geographic channel. This is how he had learned to read and understand several languages. This is also how the bat had learned about Martha, the last passenger pigeon to exist. She had died in Cincinnati on September 1, 1914, was shipped in a 300 pound block of ice to the Smithsonian Institution, thawed, stuffed, and mounted on a branch, and had sat for decades in the museum next to a plaque that read EXTINCT.” -From LJ Moore’s The Past Future Perfect

See a full transcript LJ’s text here or visit Room 220: Antenna Gallery, 3718 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117, before May 31st.

Buy Nicole’s Passenger Pigeon plate and other selections from The Last Menagerie projecthere.